The Mirror and Express have morein common than might be imagined- including a concern about statins

The Daily Express has been dying a slow and painful death for almost as long as I can remember. It's as though it's fallen victim to a combination of the ailments and concerns that dominate its front pages - failing mental powers, pension problems and always contemplating the storms ahead.Richard Desmond has tried withdrawing sustenance, but still the old girl clings on, so now he's thinking of putting her in another home. That could be the best news for half a century - if she can get on with her new housemates.Are the Trinity Mirror negotiations serious? Is the Star included in the package? What about competition considerations?If the Star were part of any deal, then Trinity Mirror would own four national dailies and four Sundays (including the Daily Record and Sunday Mail) on top of big-hitting locals such as the Liverpool Echo. That's quite a lot. Even Rupert Murdoch maxed out at three dailies and two Sundays in the old days of Today's brief life and again with the freebie London Paper.One imagines that should the talks get that far, the key for the CMA would be what Trinity intended to do with the papers and whether there was any prospect of another buyer appearing.When Murdoch bought Today there was much huffing and puffing, but it came down to a straight choice between sale to him or closure. The general feeling has tended to be we're better off with a newspaper than seeing it fold. The Express and Star newspapers are still in profit - hence the NUJ's horror at last year's cuts - so there is no immediate reason for them to die.It would probably be best all round if a new player came into the market to take over the papers, but there doesn't seem to have been a rush since Desmond started seeking a buyer at the end of last year.

So, if Trinity did seal the deal, what would - or could - it do with the Express? The first policy decision should be to stop the cuts and stop overloading the remaining staff with extra work. Trinity's regional network gives it an excellent fund of stories that may not be picked up by other nationals. We have seen this occasionally with the Mirror - this case of the Liverpool woman, pictured, who was beaten and held prisoner by her husband for three days is an example - and this could benefit the Express. If the paper were allowed to recruit smart operators (or encourage existing staff to reach beyond the save-get headlines), there are plenty of good human interest stories out there to give it a different voice from the rest of the Street. There is little point in worrying overmuch about what "Express readers" would or wouldn't like. There are still half a million buyers, which is not to be sniffed at, but they are a dwindling band. Instant radical change would be foolhardy, but a long-term transition to a new home on the political spectrum, leaving the strident right-wingery to the Mail, would be great for everyone. We could really do with a slightly left-of-centre (dare I say Blairite?) whitetop with the middle-market instincts of the Mail, but with an understanding that most women don't have the luxury of being stay-at-home mothers who spend the day baking cakes for shiny diligent children who call them Mummy. The i almost meets this market, the Mirror is an out-and-out redtop, and the Independent counts as a broadsheet in this context.In the short-term, with the expertise of Mirror staff to hand, there is no reason why the Express couldn't be turned into something slicker relatively quickly. It's all about changing the mindset and giving the staff freedom to express themselves. Go cold turkey on the health stories, leave weather forecasting to the Met Office, and soft-pedal the politics. For those who think there is no way the Express and Mirror could live side by side, maybe the collage below of the two papers' coverage of one particular subject last year will demonstrate that there is at least some common ground.

This photograph appeared on the Express front page 24 times last year and on the Mirror 15, but the Mirror was the more enthusiastic Madeleine splasher, leading on the hunt 15 times against seven for the Express papers, three of them in the Sunday paper.The Mirror has also offered what could be seen as an early sign of solidarity with a big puff yesterday on another of the Express's favourite subjects: the safety or otherwise of statins.All this said, though, the ideal would still be for an outside buyer to come forward and take over the Madeleine McCann house journal. There is one organisation that has been vociferous about the failings of the mainstream Press over the past five years, an organisation that has the support of (and is probably influenced by) Kate and Gerry McCann. Maybe it would be the ideal owner for the Express. Step forward Hacked Off. Why not put your money where your mouth is?

PS:I hate the insular "British resources for British people" attitude, buthurrah for the Daily Star, whose splash today asks a question that has been troubled many of us for years. Why has a contingent of London police officers been assigned to an investigation that is entirely outside their jurisdiction? Even without the financial considerations, the notion that British officers are bound to do a better job than those on the scene in Portugal is offensively imperialistic. Of course the recovery of Madeleine McCann would be the biggest story of the year, but the McCanns, the Met and the media need to get real. It's unlikely to happen. It's time to call a halt to this pantomime.

There's never a good time to lose your job, but sympathy levels rise when the axe falls around Christmas. Being sacked in December is guaranteed to put a dampener on the festivities, but if execution is stayed until January, chances are there'll be an overloaded credit card to add to the worries.Express Newspapers announced in the summer that it wanted to reduce its 650-strong editorial workforce to 450. Staff were invited to apply for redundancy and told that if too few came forward by the end of August, sackings would follow. In October, parent company Northern and Shell issued annual results showing that it had turned a £5.6m loss to an operating profit of £37m. The print and publishing arm had seen a threefold increase in profits to £33m, but the redundancy programme - which should have been completed two months earlier - would continue.A further deadline for applications was set at December 15, but that day came and went with the company reportedly still well short of the 200 volunteers it wanted. Journalists now have until January 1 to decide whether to jump or risk being pushed. Should make for some interesting conversations over the turkey.

While Express journalists seem eager to stay aboard, picture staff at the Times appear to be more than willing to jump ship.Last week's Gorkana jobs register included listings for a news picture editor, two assistant picture editors and a picture researcher. The ad for the top job offers a "competitive" salary for whoever ends up leading a department that is made up of "professional, energetic and creative journalists". It continues:

As news picture editor of The Times, you will be responsible for creating outstanding picture packages for the news, foreign and business sections of the paper, as well as on tablet, smartphone and web. You will ... be required to build working relationships with desk heads, photographers and agencies, while inspiring a team of picture editors and researchers to deliver visually compelling editions across all platforms.The Times news picture editor will be part of a back-bench team whose aim is to lead the news agenda with great journalism and stunning pictures.

To see such a plum Fleet Street job advertised is unusual, to see four senior posts in the same department up for grabs suggests carelessness somewhere.The desk was pared down in the redundancy round at the end of 2011 and the past few months have seen the departures of a stream of professional, energetic and creative journalists, including the award-winning photographers Chris Harris and Pete Nicholls.The picture editor Sue Connolly and her deputy Lizzy Orcutt were invited to apply for redefined jobs, which resulted in Orcutt's departure. Connolly is now also an ex-Times journalist, as are commissioning editor Paul Bellsham, online picture editor Elizabeth Hanna, and several staffers and regular casuals who worked on the home, business and foreign desks. SubScribe understands that editor John Witherow has firm ideas about pictures and that his choices can be expensive. If the department were to remain in budget economies had to be made elsewhere. Desk staff were asked to reapply for their jobs - with cuts of up to 30% in their salaries. Several decided to walk rather than go through such a process. Hence the recruitment flurry.The management approach sounds harsh, but it has created openings that may embolden some talented and creative people to take the Express payoff and head upstream from Blackfriars to London Bridge. For those who are more hesitant, the Times ad offers further reassurance:

News UK is a great company full of talented, dedicated and creative people. We are a company which has journalism at its very heart. Our newspapers and associated websites are some of the most powerful media brands in the English speaking world, reaching 30 million people each week...News UK is a company which thrives on pace. Our people stretch themselves on a daily basis, challenging the status quo to produce the best service possible to our readers and customers. We embrace creativity and initiative and we have some of the most talented people in the industry.If you want to work for one of the world's most exciting, challenging and creative media organisations then News UK is the place to build your career.

And just in case you were tempted to scoff at the predilection for woodland scenes and ballerinas, it's worth remembering that The Times is the one paper that is putting on sales month by month. It has also emerged from the first half of the awards season with its arms full of trophies.So it must be doing something right. Even if it's not wo/man management.As one long-serving journalist not known for a positive view of life in the newsroom said:

The spirit of co-operation between news gathering and news production is better than at any time in my 20 years. I think it's a better paper than when it was filled with dull pics of politicians in suits and pie charts, and the care that goes into assembling it night after night is a credit to all who labour long hours to make it so...It's a collaborative effort, for which we are well paid (although we'd all like more). We all knew about antisocial hours and tight deadlines before we signed up and have no right to bleat about it afterwards. It's the job. It's what we do. We try to produce the best paper we can within the constraints that all media endure and more often than not, we succeed.

Gameoldgirl had a rare morning away from the laptop today. Up and on the train to the big city while it was still dark, it was a strange experience. Not getting up at 5.30am. Not paying a quid a mile for the journey from Essex into Liverpool Street (ouch!). Not even coming home with a piece of glass that now sits proudly on the piano.No, the strange thing was that, while most people in the carriage had with strings in their ears and were playing with tablets and smartphones, there was a man in his fifties standing reading a newspaper. And it was the Daily Express. This website and its predecessor blog has had many a laugh at the Express's expense. This bit of nonsense from last year remains one of the most well read, and last month we had some fun with its little sister the Star and its mission to scare readers half to death.There have been more serious concerns: women bulging out of bikinis on the front page of the Star are largely responsible for Tesco's decision to redesign its newspaper displays so that pre-school children are not confronted with body parts they should not be encountering for at least another decade. The jungle/Big Brother obsession is unfathomable - especially since Richard Desmond has divested himself of Channel 5, which broadcasts BB.And then there's the Express and immigration, which is a real worry. It can write about statins and dementia and diabetes forever and it probably won't do any harm, but the poison on Europe and migrants is unpalatable.Gameoldgirl has always rather fancied editing the Express. Yes, it's a fool's errand. But never mind that, it's not going to happen. There's something irresistible about taking over a team at the bottom of its game; where's the fun in inheriting a successful model? Ask David Moyes.Returning from London, the editor of this website discovered that the sports blogger had gone all independent and written about the demise of the Express sports staff - and a sorry read it is, too.The big question in all this - as the NUJ keeps asking the proprietor - is "If you don't love it, why don't you let it go?"It's unfathomable. Money isn't in short supply at Northern & Shell after the sale of Channel 5. If he's not going to invest in his papers, why is he clinging on to them? Is it greed? Does he think that newspaper proprietorship automatically equals political influence?Just imagine if he could be persuaded to sell and just imagine if a liberal, Centre-Left owner could be found to take on the Mail and the Telegraph and increase the diversity of Fleet Street at a stroke.I think I'll put it on my Christmas wish list.

The Mirror and Express made rare common cause yesterday with puffs predicting a Hallowe'en heatwave. A couple of days of warm weather and we can't help but start comparing ourselves with Benidorm or Benin. At this time of the year, it also means the arboretums are full of photographers competing for the half-page slots that will doubtless be devoted to trees with light streaming through golden foliage.

Sure enough, here's the Express's effort on page 11: a couple of children climbing a tree at Westonbirt, sunrise over Tower Bridge and a 14-par weather forecast.But what's that little single squeezed between the ads? A new £97m Met Office computer will be able to do 16,000 trillion calculations a second and give better warning of extreme weather. This will, the Express says, give a £2bn boost to the economy.Here we have a development that is likely to influence the paper's newslist for years to come and it is written off in three pars.And three not very meaningful pars. What does that number of calculations mean? It certainly sounds a lot, but how does it compare with other computers? What sort of calculations? Is it that special or so last century?How will the economy benefit to the tune of £2bn - and will that be an annual boost or a one-off?

The Telegraph was more enthusiastic about the story - to the extent of making it the splash - and so came up with a little more detail. The new computer would be able to carve the country into 300-metre chunks so that local variations in the weather could be predicted more accurately, a great help when councils need to know which roads to grit or where snow ploughs are going to be needed. The Met Office should also be able to predict the weather for the next 24 hours with 90% accuracy. Apparently at the moment it can do so only for the coming 12 hours and to be honest, most of us can do that by looking out of the window.The Telegraph also tells us about those 16,000 trillion calculations, which seem to suggest that our supercomputer - which has mysteriously not been given an affectionate name yet - it is going to do a lot of pondering, cross-checking and going through the files, since it is to be fed a mere 106 million observations a day.The Telegraph also contributes to our collection of pointless comparisons by noting that the computer would weigh as much as 11 double-decker buses. Aren't double-decker buses supposed to be used for height comparison? Have you ever lifted one? No, neither have I. The only person in the country who might have half an idea of what this means is Geoff Capes. So where is he when you need him? Apparently breeding budgies in Lincolnshire.The Times was also enthused by the October warmth as a source of pretty pictures and it cross-reffed from its Westonbirt picture on 19 to "Met Office supercomputer, page 57". Here, on the weather map page, we have a little gem from Paul Simons. He gets the 16 trillion calculations fact into the first sentence and makes it a little more relevant in the next, saying that this is 13 times as many as the existing computer, making it one of the most powerful in the world. I'd still like to know who's at the top of the league. Nasa? Apple? Something in China?But then comes the hidden treasure: the Met Office got its taste for computer forecasting from the old Lyons Corner House business:

After the war Lyons wanted to improve its operation and looked at the electronic computers being used by the military in the US. They were so impressed that in 1951 they made their own computer in the UK called Leo I, standing for the Lyons Electronic Office I. This was the world’s first business computer, and one of its early tasks was to collate daily orders phoned in each day from the teashops and calculate the overnight orders and delivery schedules. Lyons even factored in weather forecasts for the fresh produce carried by its delivery vans.

The Met Office showed an interest and Lyons let its forecasters use Leo. They liked it so much that in 1959 they bought their own, which was named Meteor. Given our new knowledge about how many trillions of calculations a computer should be expected to do today, we obviously want to know Meteor measured up. According to Simons it could do 30,000 a second.Five lovely pars and fair play to Simons for keeping this material for his Weather Eye column - but did this story really belong tucked away on page 57?

The Guardian thought not, and gave the story the best show, combining its pretty autumn pictures (including the obligatory snap from Westonbirt) with a page lead that turned the 11 double-deckers into 14 tonnes. There's a nice little panel labelled "Cloud computing" that charts the history of Met Office computers, although it doesn't mention the Lyons Corner House connection. The Guardian also came up with the cutest heading, but it still didn't tell us its name. For that we had to turn to the Independent. And the answer is....Cray@XC40.I think that needs some work.

Renee Zellwegger was back on the Mail front page this morning with the heading "Another new look for fresh-faced Renee". Good to know that the sarcasm machine is still well-oiled.Obediently following the instruction to "See page 7", we found three more pictures of the actress and a story from the "Mail Foreign Service". Good to know that it wasn't too busy with ebola or Isis.

Hair swept up in a messy bun, Renee Zellweger’s fresh-faced appearance dispels any notion that her recent change of look was merely the result of make-up.Spotted for the first time since her headline-grabbing transformation, the actress appeared somewhat tired and anxious as she ran errands over the weekend in Mississippi.

What is that first paragraph trying to say? Well, we're supposed to infer that she must have had surgery. But if Ms Z were to protest, the paper could argue that it was simply saying that last week's chiselled look was more than foundation, powder and blusher deep.Headline-grabbing transformation? Ouch. Transformation, that is, from the "puffy rounded cheeks and pout" for which she was previously known. Double ouch.The Express also ran into the actress out and about during breaks in filming a new movie, which both papers dutifully name. But Laura Holland saw her through differently tinted spectacles:

Bridget Jones actress Renee Zellwegger is looking more like her normal self after rumours she had cosmetic surgery...The 45-year-old was much more recognisable...wearing casual clothes and her blonde hair stylishly scraped into a bun...

So far so good...suggestions of surgery were silly, says Zellwegger. "Perhaps I look different. Who doesn't when they get older. I'm happy."Is Holland convinced?

Yet the Jerry Maguire actress was almost unrecognisable - with her super line-free forehead, altered brow and puffy face.

Ouch, ouch, ouch! So when the Express says she looks more like her normal self, it didn't mean that she looked like her normal self, just less unlike her normal self than last week? And while she was much more recognisable, she was still almost unrecognisable - so was she completely unrecognisable last week? Confused? You bet. So were the subs. The contradictory headlines play nicely against each other - but not with the copy underneath. And that's the general idea.

The word "will" means something is definitely going to happen. If something might happen should circumstances allow, the word "would" is the one we want. It's called the conditional tense. Headline-writing customs pay fast and loose with tenses, the past is rendered as present, the pluperfect as the perfect; captions meanwhile have an anachronistic style all their own: "Mrs Bloggs wears a red dress yesterday..." So what's the problem with avoiding the boring old conditional?Well... both the Times and Expressgive us fiscal policy news that is apparently set in stone. Labour will impose a mansion tax; inheritance tax will be abolished. TheTimes is the lesser offender, since the "if it comes to power" is understood. The Express, however, has no sense of attribution, The heading is presented as a bald fact. Only when you read the text do you realise that this is a policy objective of Ukip, a party with no MPs (this month) and which, last time I looked, was not yet on course to form a government.Looking at the text of theTimes splash we find the word "will" used in its correct context: "Ed Miliband will today promise..." It's a leak of his speech, fair enough. But Francis Elliott goes on to use the word willy-nilly to tell us how Labour intends to raise and allocate money to the advantage of the NHS, as though there's no doubt that the party will be elected to office next year.It's one thing to bend the rules in headings, but a bit of conditionality in the copy would have been nice.

The Mirror and Sun share a heart-warming (no pun intended) splash about a woman who "sensed" her dead son's heart beating in another man's chest. It appears in a number of other papers too. But whether it's the "most amazing" story you'll read or even a "miracle" depends on your astonishment threshold. Freda Carter had wanted for years to find out who had received her son John's heart, but hospital rules allowed her to be told only that the recipient was a teenager called Scott. Last year she attended a memorial service for transplant donors. A young man called Scott gave a reading. She put two and two together and came up with four. Happy days for everyone.The meeting took place in November, why it has surfaced only now is unclear. But that's probably beside the point.The Carters live in Sunderland, Scott lives in North Shields, the transplant and the service took place in Newcastle. Mrs Carter isn't psychic, as the Sun tells us. This isn't an 'of all the churches in all the world' chance-in-a-zillion story. It's one of a determined woman overcoming bureaucracy (in place, incidentally, for good reasons of privacy and emotional stability) to achieve her heart's desire (pun intended).Let's hope that she can be content with this as her happy ending.

It's easy to lump the Mail and Express together. They share many of the same values, they have a similar basic design, they both position themselves in the middle market and are deemed to be a notch above the redtops.But days like today show that for all their similarities they are worlds apart. Whatever you think of the Mail's journalism, it is supremely professionally executed. The fundamental awareness of what is important is ingrained.Our whole legal system is built upon the principle that justice must not only be done but that it must be seen to be done. Secret courts are the tools of despots and dictators.Even the surreal events in the Cairo courtroom where three Al-Jazeera journalists and their colleagues are appearing today are open to public scrutiny. The prosecution and the proceedings may seem farcical, but we can see what's happening. Journalists are taking photographs, filming videos and tweeting constantly. They even talk to the defendants during recesses.Here in Britain, two people accused of serious terrorist offences will go on trial the week after next. The case will be heard by a jury, but no reporters or members of the public will be allowed into the hearings. Nor will they be able to report the outcome. Indeed, until yesterday the media were forbidden even to report the hearing of their appeal against the secrecy order. Without the lifting of that gagging order, we would not know that the trial was to take place at all.

This is all pretty heavy stuff. There are issues of national security and issues of natural justice at the heart of this case. It is unsurprisingly the splash in the Guardian and, as we see above, in the Mail. It is also on the front of the Telegraph, the page 2 lead in the Times and it gets a decent show in the Mirror and Sun.For the Express, the latest advice on avoiding dementia is more important, coupled with a photograph of the Queen (fair enough) and a headline about "hard-working Britons" that sounds like a party political broadcast (not fair enough).The secret trial makes 150 words on page 2, with a crosshead that says "significant" - which SubScribe would love to think was put in bya sub as a rebuke to those who gave it so little space.The Independent also seems to have tripped up in its news judgment today: the story appears on page 20, the last home news page. The poisoned babies don't fare much better - they are on 19.This ruling really matters and it should have been given prominence everywhere. The argument here is not the media's right to report the proceedings, it is the public's right - duty, even - to witness.It is perfectly possible to impose restrictions on which elements of the trial are reported. For all that the Press is branded irresponsible, uncontrolled, intrusive and accused of general scumbaggery, it obeys court orders. If national security requires that only the verdict and any sentence are reported at the end, then so be it. If editors and those attending have to sign confidentiality contracts, then so be it.There are mechanisms that can be employed. But conducting entire trials in camera is not democratic and every newspaper should be shouting it from the rooftops.

The writing has been on the wall for months. It has been painful to watch the disintegration of David Moyes as he stumbled in Alex Ferguson's shoes like a toddler trying on Mum's high heels. The parting of the ways finally came at 8.30 this morning when Manchester United tweeted that Moyes had left the club. For the Press it was just as well: the sacking-to-be was the lead in every sports section and the splash in the Daily Mirror and the Manchester Evening News. Every front page, apart from the Financial Times, had at least a puff. Besides the splash, the Mirror gave the story a spread on 4-5 plus four pages in sport. There were seven pages in the Mail, five in the Sun, Times and Telegraph, four in the Independent, three in the Guardian, Star and Express and two in the i. Remember, these reams of newsprint were devoted to a story that hadn't happened.There was a lot of axeing and a few "the ends". The Sun produced the worst heading of all with its toe-curling non-pun on the front.

There were some good spreads - notably from the Express,top right, and Star - and a nice clean graphic in the Telegraph, below.

Overall the coverage was fairly sympathetic. No turnip heads here. But there will be many who look at the papers and wonder at the amount of effort being put into this story in comparison, say, to the Korean ferry disaster. This is not only football, but also very big business, so who manages Manchester United does matter. But there are far, far more people who don't care about United than do. This was demonstrated on Twitter with tweets showing people how to cut anything to do with Moyes from their streams. Unfortunately you can't cut off bits of the radio and television broadcasts that you don't want and still see or hear the rest, and plenty were protesting about the amount of time given over to the story on the Today programme and World at One.And supposing he hadn't been sacked? Well, there was at least one paper - the Scotsman, above - that would have been happier than it probably is today. For those who are interested in the development of the story, here's Andy Dickinson's rather splendid Storify of the day:

Liz Gerard

New year, new face: it's time to come out from behind that Beryl Cook mask. I'm Liz Gerard, and after four decades dedicated to hard news, I now live by the motto "Those who can do, those who can't write blogs". These are my musings on our national newspapers. Some of them may have value.